


"The Hills have Eyes" Drabble Collection

by The_Readers_Muse



Category: The Hills Have Eyes (2006 2007)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Multi, Post Movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-16 12:48:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14165178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: A series of drabbles pertaining to the 2006 remake of "The Hills have eyes."





	1. Bobby - Missing scene, after credits scene.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own "The Hills have Eyes". Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: A series of drabbles pertaining to adaptions of the 2006 remake of: “The Hills have Eyes” Each chapter will be marked with appropriate pairings, version, etc.
> 
> Disclaimer: please read the disclaimer attached to each individual chapter.

Doug was almost catatonic by the time they reached him. All the conscious parts of him dead or shutting down as Beast led him jerkily over the sand and bit-up gravel.  
  
He was half-sure it was just a mirage before Brenda bounded off and left him alone. Realizing slowly, too slowly, that it was real. That Doug had made it. Doug and Catherine. Doug had-  
  
He overtook Brenda somehow.  
  
Seeing Doug take shape through the smoke and heat-sweat.  
  
Bloody.  
  
Wounded.  
  
But still putting one foot in front of the other.  
  
_Still alive._  
  
He thought they were going in for an embrace before he felt the man sag against him. Exhaling wetly, a sob that only he seemed to hear, as the four of them collided with one another. Only barely aware that Brenda was scooping up Catherine and putting her arm under Doug's other shoulder. Helping to keep him upright as the stench of blood, sweat and rot threatened to make him gag.  
  
Still, he couldn't stop himself from just holding him.  
  
He couldn't believe they were alive.  
  
Lynn would have-  
  
The man wheezed out a painful, wounded sound when his hand brushed against his side. Looking down only to see a bloody rag tied around the stumps of at least two severed fingers. Still pulsing fresh trickles every time Beast pulled on the leash.  
  
Jesus Christ, what the hell had those bastards done to him?  
  
He uncurled Doug's remaining fingers from the leash as Brenda shushed the baby. Taking it in quickly, quietly, as Doug wavered. Eyes unfocused - probably a concussion - or maybe worse. Too out of it to say anything as the man's broken glasses glinted with prescription shards and a bent frame. Clothes and skin painted thick with half-dried red as Doug's forehead clunked awkwardly against his breastbone. Trying his best to keep him vertical as Brenda tried to coax some words out of him.  
  
There was so much blood he couldn't tell where one wound started and the other stopped.  
  
But somehow, in that moment, it didn't matter.  
  
They weren't alone anymore.  
  
And selfish as that was, he couldn't help but feel stronger by the second.  
  
"Come on," he finally rasped, voice pitching high with exhaustion before he cleared his throat and looked over Doug's head to catch Brenda's eye. The four of them swaying there unsteadily as the heat rippled through the surrounding air. Arid and painfully dry. "Lets go home."


	2. Bobby - after credits scene.

_"You guys aren't going to wait till Dad gets back?"_  
  
_"Ah, no, Bobby. I'm exhausted. I need to get some sleep."_  
  
_"Oh, no no no no, it's fine. You'll be- you'll be more comfortable here because I'll sleep on the floor and Mom, Brenda will be up front. You and Lynn can take the back. We've got extra sleeping bags and stuff too so-"_  
  
_"Bobby, you got six people sleeping in a three person trailer. It's not comfortable and it's a little bit weird, ok?"_  


* * *

  
They made it.  
  
That was the most surprising part.  
  
If there were more of those...people... they didn't bother them as they dragged ass down the dirt road. Feeling each and every step as his mouth scored itself raw with grit. Mouth so dry he couldn't get enough moisture to spit out the sand that was trying to settle between his teeth.  
  
Brenda tried asking what'd happened. How many of them he'd killed. Where he was injured. What they were. Who they were. But Doug wasn't talking. At this point he wasn't even sure the man could.  
  
The gas station was barely in sight by the time Doug finally collapsed. Sagging into a sudden dead-weight as they staggered to the right and almost fell. Forced to reach into reserves he didn't know he had just to keep them upright.  
  
"We need to get help," Brenda murmered worriedly. Shifting Catherine in her arms as the baby fussed weakly, drooling down her back. Head mostly covered from the worst of the sun by a bit of cloth they managed to salvage from the remains of the trailer.  
  
He nodded numbly as the fabric flared and rippled, listening to her talk about finding a phone or a radio. A working car. There had to be something. But it was all a blur. Hyper-focusing on the burnt edges of the pattern as it fluttered in the breeze. He was pretty sure they used to be the kitchen curtains, actually.  
  
They fell asleep in a pile on a musty smelling double mattress in the back room. Ignoring the newspaper cut-outs of missing people and the purse full of wallets and jewelry that'd been left on the wooden desk by the window.  
  
It was too much.  
  
They just couldn't take in anymore.

* * *

  
He woke up sometime later to Doug pulling them in tighter on either side of him. Making soft, wounded sounds deep in his throat before slipping back to sleep with bloody fingers still curled around their skin. Killing any remaining space in favor of just being close.  
  
It wasn't weird.  
  
Nothing was weird anymore.


	3. Doug - post movie. (Small reference to a "Wrong Turn" crossover

No one believed them.  
  
None of them were really surprised by it.  
  
They knew how it sounded.  
  
Hell, they'd lived it and it still didn't seem real.  
  
But it was harder than he thought it would be to sit opposite some bored looking detective and listen to the asshole try to tell him for the sixth time in under two days that they'd probably just imagined it. That they'd created a 'false trauma' to cope with the reality of the 'real trauma'. What'd (really) happened.  
  
He ended up popping a stitch in one of his stumps clenching his fists as the shrink in the grey-pencil skirt and lazy eye took page after page of notes without even speaking to him. Watching the same two doctors talk in hushed voices to men in official looking uniforms. Pointing at him when they thought he wasn't looking as their mouths made words like: PTSD, broken bones, concussion and skull fracture.  
  
Brenda and Bobby were the only leveled constants in his life. With him every step of the way as Catherine started teething and CPS tried to make a case to put her into protective custody until he healed.  
  
Lynn had been right.  
  
They should have brought that soothing ring along after all.  
  
The three of them checked themselves out of the hospital, against doctor's orders, not long after that. Each of them nursing a grudge along with all the darker things that were still refusing to heal. He didn't know how Bobby and Brenda were dealing with it. If he'd had the capacity to care, he would have asked.  
  
He would have forced it out of them like Lynn would have wanted. He would have made sure they got help. That they saw the right people. But he didn't. He couldn't. He was barely keeping his head above water. Barely able to make sure Catherine was happy and healthy and that he was forcing down the three meals a day Lynn had always made a fuss about him skipping.  
  
Instead, he stuck close. He ignored the texts and emails from work and the house-sitter still watching their apartment, who kindly left a message on his voicemail, telling him to take all the time he needed, and took them home. Pulling up to the white picket fence and blue-trimmed eves as Beast started whining from the backseat. And when Brenda broke down in the front hall after Bobby unearthed the spare key from one of the flowerpots, he was there to catch her before she crumpled to the carpet. Carrying her upstairs, past the smiling pictures of Bob and Ethel, the cabinet that still displayed the best shots from he and Lynn's wedding. Catherine's first sonogram. Pictures of Lynn, Bobby and Brenda spaced throughout the house like a shrine to a reality that no longer existed.  
  
Bobby didn't say a word for the next two weeks.  
  
Brenda rarely left her room.  
  
And every so often he went down into the unfinished basement, turned on the old boom box he found under the stairs, and just let himself scream. Taking Bob's splintery old sledge-hammer to the concrete floor until he couldn't feel anything anymore.

* * *

No one believed them right up until the people the cops sent to check their story and retrieve the bodies never came back. Or the people they sent to check on them, and so on. Unsurprisingly, that was when things got complicated.

* * *

The day Brenda told the harried looking police detective to go fuck himself when they were dragged in for questioning after the disappearance of the third search and recovery team, he startled all of them - including himself - with the first genuine laugh since everything had happened.  
  
It wasn't a nice sound.  
  
But it was contagious.  
  
And that was something in itself right there, he figured.

* * *

Three months later found him back in he and Lynn's old apartment. Slowing packing up everything they owned as the 'sold' sign waved triumphantly from the front lawn of their apartment complex. He'd already sold the business. Making bank from it too as someone from one of the big corporations made him an offer he couldn't refuse just to slap their name on his prime, downtown real estate.   
  
Once apon a time he would have refused on pure principle.  
  
Nowadays he just didn't have the energy.   
  
He was avoiding starting on the bedroom when a sleek black sedan with tinted windows pulled up in front of the entrance. He didn't wait for the suits to get out. He just sighed and looked over at Catherine as he tucked the Glock he'd taken from Bob's gun cabinet into the back of his jeans - just in case. Watching the baby watch him with solemn eyes from her pack and play until the landline started ringing.  
  


* * *

  
"Doug Bukowski?"  
  
"I'm not interested," he answered flatly as they crowded the doorway enough that he was forced to step back. Letting them gain ground until he shrugged and let them. Walking towards the pile of boxes like he didn't give a damn. "And I don't care."  
  
Lynn's ghost frowned at him out of the corner of his eye.  
  
 _'They're just doing their job, Doug. Don't be an ass.'_  
  
He didn't let himself look at her.  
  
Knowing by now that she wouldn't be there when he did.  
  
Catherine let go of an indignant sound when he didn't stop to pick her up. Bubbling loudly at her own echoes as the first suit flashed him an official looking badge. Agent something or other from the FBI or maybe CIA. He still didn't care. Instead, he watched the man as he looked around the room, taking in the flipped picture frames and small tower of boxes before settling back on him.  
  
"I think you know why we're here," the second suit replied, shouldering his way to the window as the third cracked a thin smile in Catherine's direction. "We have questions about-"  
  
"Go to hell," he replied, static and hard. Devoid of any strong emotion or inflection that were generally attached to the words as the three of them looked up at him with varying shades of irritation.   
  
Except the leader.  
  
He was looking at him like he could see _it-_ whatever that _'it'_ was.  
  
Like he could almost-  
  
"By the look of you, you've seen it. You've been there and back," the first agent responded, cocking his head at him in a way that brought all the rage he thought he'd bled out of him roaring back to the surface. "So, how was it?"  
  
He didn't even think about it. He just hauled back and punched the man dead in the face. Dropping him like a ton of bricks as the other two went for their side-arms. Leaving him standing there, breathing hard, and only just starting to regret it when the man spat a mouthful of blood onto his freshly cleaned carpet and huffed an impressed sounding note.  
  
"Lower your weapons," the man stated firmly. Accepting one of his subordinate's hands as he wiped his mouth and smoothed his suit. Looking at him with a new found respect he didn't know could be so gratifying as the the moment stretched.  
  
Surprisingly, he didn't get arrested.  
  
Instead, the agent started talking.

* * *

  
Agent Simmons told him everything.  
  
That it wasn't just an isolated incident. That stories just like his had been popping out of the wood work for decades almost everywhere there was wide swaths of underpopulated land and nuclear testing. They told him about an incident in West Virginia three years before where there'd been survivors - just like them. Chris Flynn and Jessie Burlingame, the only two left alive out of a group of six.  
  
The kinship he felt was beyond words.  
  
Only able to nod numbly when the man offered to arrange a meeting. Telling him   
the two of them worked for his agency now.  
  
And that was why they were here.  
  
To offer him a god damned job.  
  


* * *

  
"So, what do you say? Do you want to help me make sure this never happens to anyone ever again?"  
  
He only had to look at Catherine and the bloody, jagged hole Lynn's death had left in their lives to answer.  
  


* * *

  
Six years later he was an official consultant for the military .  
  
Bob would have liked that.  
  
The old him wouldn't have.  
  
He figured he was somewhere in the middle these days.  
  
Because apparently there was truth to the saying that you could never really go back. He just wasn't the same person anymore. The one who cared about all the stupid things he used to. The one who'd always backed down first. Who went over everything he should have said and done afterwards in the safety of his mind. The one who avoided the things that hurt.   
  
He knew what he could survive now.  
  
He knew exactly what and who he was.   
  
And there was a measure of good in that.   
  
In finally knowing himself.   
  
_Really knowing himself._  
  
Because some day he knew they'd come for him again.  
  
And this time, he was going to be ready for them.


End file.
